Angel Wheeler

Category: Uncategorized

  • Pets

     

    This cat belongs to my niece Ashlynn.

    He goes by the name of Biggie.

    It’s short, or maybe it’s long, for Big Cat, his real name.

    One might think him to be gigantic with a name like Biggie or Big Cat.  To the contrary.  It’s that Ashlynn had two identical cats.  One was bigger than the other, so naturally they got penned Big Cat and Little Cat. 

    Little Cat pooped all over the house and something very mysterious happened to him.  He just vanished one day.  Up in smoke.  He should have been named Houdini the way he magically disappeared.  It was during a time when my sister was in town visiting.  I do believe she was the last one to see him, but oh nevermind about that story.  Perhaps you’ve had a pet Houdini in your life as well.

    Yesterday I received a phone call from my mother.  She was moping about.  Biggie was gone. 

    Then later I received a text from my niece.  It read:

    ATTENTION:  yellow tiger cat, named and listens to Biggie.  If found plz call.  THANK YOU!!!

    This isn’t the first time Biggie has run off.  One other time my mom needed to leave town for about a week, so Ashlynn came to stay with me and brought Biggie with her.  He was in the yard 12 seconds before he promptly disappeared.  The next day, he still hadn’t surfaced.  We checked the pound and made posters to hang on the the lamp posts.  My sweet niece was beside herself with grief.  Did he get lost?   Could he not find his way home in this strange neighborhood?  Had he been picked up?  After 3 days, we put an ad in the paper.  No one called.  Then one night my husband popped in the door late after work and announced to Ashlynn, “I just saw your cat running across the street.”  We were then able to breathe easier knowing that he was simply out tomcatting in a new neighborhood and would return when he was through prowling.  And he did.  Three or four days later, he came back and infested us with the worst case of fleas I do believe I have ever witnessed.  Needless to say, that was the last time I kept Biggie when my mom went out-of-town.

    Yesterday when my mom phoned, I reminded her of that story.  Remember mom?  Remember?  Oh yeah, she remembered.  She felt better and relaxed with the faith he would return.  And he did.  Today he is back home sleeping off his wild adventure.

     To many, one of the worst experiences in their young life is when their beloved pet goes missing.  My childhood pet, the one I dearly loved, was a cowdog named Fancy.  Loyalty was to her as orange is to the sunset.  I remember losing her one Saturday.  My friend Misti and I had been hanging out at my house early that day.  We decided to walk around the block to Misti’s house and of course Fancy followed, her little stub tail wagging.  We played a while inside Misti’s house, then ventured out to her back yard.  After a time on the trampoline, boredom set in, so we opened the back gate, went down the alley and back to my house to engage in something more exciting.  After a day full of play, dusk came, and we couldn’t find Fancy.  We looked and called and called and looked.  Finally, we discovered her lying on Misti’s front porch, waiting.  Waiting on us to come back out of the house we had entered hours earlier.  That was the last place she had seen us, and she would not abandon us.  No matter how strong her hunger.  Or her thirst.  She had followed us to Misti’s house and when we went inside, she stayed on the porch. Unaware that we had gone out the back door and down the alley back home, she faithfully remained on the porch.  

    For the entire day. 

    I do believe she would have waited there all night.  I’m just glad she didn’t have to.

  • So Happy Together!

    My cowboy husband J-Dub needed to move some cows on Saturday.  They had grazed down a pasture pretty well and needed some greener grass.  You know, over on the other side.  It is typically a rather large job for one cowboy alone to move 90 cows from one pasture to another, so he moved most of them with the feed wagon, aka the cake wagon, aka the feed truck.  Cows recognize the Chevy that feeds them and once trained they most of them will follow the feed truck from here to kingdom come.  Or at least into the next pasture.  He later planned to get horseback to go pick up the few stragglers, the loners, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

    It is not uncommon for a mama cow to leave her baby calf to come feed.  J-Dub noticed this one mama cow in particular who approached the gate, almost stepped over the threshold,  almost crossed into the Promised Land of Greener Pastures, but then thought better of it and turned to go find her calf that she had abandoned for the buffet line.  J-Dub made sure to leave the gate open so once they paired up, they could return to the rest of the herd. 

    Side note:  While my husband was telling me this story, I just couldn’t understand it.  It has been ingrained into my brain as a cowboy’s wife to ALWAYS CLOSE THE GATE!  I just couldn’t understand why in the Sam Hill he would leave a gate open and allow all those cows that he just moved to return to the pasture he wanted them out of.  But then he oh-so-very-patiently explained to me in his most gentle, most soft-spoken, sweetest voice that they had grazed the old pasture down and the grass was better in the new pasture.  And of course any cowboy’s wife worth her weight in Wranglers would know that cows will stay in the pasture with the better grass.  Hence, I hang my head in shame.

    All the moving of cows here and yon happened on Saturday.  On Monday, he noticed the same mama cow wandering aimlessly, with a tight bag (a sign that her baby had not nursed recently) through the grazed pasture looking for something she’d lost.  And it wasn’t her ear tag she was looking for.  She and her baby, unequipped with GPS, still had not found one another.   It had been 2 days.   A baby will typically return to the last place it nursed, and it’s mother will find it there.  But this baby must’ve gotten a wild hair and ventured farther than the street lamp.  J-Dub drove around the pasture, looking for the baby without any success.  Needing to get on to other duties, he had no choice but to leave. 

    Today when he checked on the cows, the situation was the same.  A mama with no baby.   A baby with no mama.  After 3 nights without the protection of its mother from the Big Bad Coyotes that roam freely, without the warmth and nourishment of its mother’s milk, the likelihood of the calf surviving was bleak. 

    But alas, I will not tell a tale without a happy ending.  Not today anyway.   

     J-Dub decided he would get horseback and go to the far end of the pasture.  He began bawling like a little baby calf.  This was an act of trickery so the mother cow would think it was her baby bawling instead and follow.  It worked.  She followed J-Dub over to the far end of the pasture where lo and behold, a small miracle occurred and the baby calf was found alive. They were reunited and it felt so good.    

    The calf’s little belly is full, the mama’s bag is no longer engorged, the gate is closed and all is well.

  • The Apron

    When I was a little girl I loved to wear an apron.  I remember the feeling of tying an old apron around my waist.  The ties were so long they wrapped back around in front and tied in a bow.  I would ask my mom if I could clean.  Of course she whole-heartedly agreed to that proposition.  I would load my large apron pockets with necessary cleaning supplies, and my cleaning would last about 8 minutes.  Or less.  There was a novelty in wearing the apron, but not the chores that came along with it. 

    In high school, my waitressing job required us to wear a maroon dress with a white ruffled apron over it.  My grandmother would starch and iron my apron until it stood alone.  Each evening after I came in from work, I would hand her my apron.  As I got ready for bed, she would sit at her kitchen table, empty my pockets, stack and count my tips in nice little piles and proudly tell me how much money I made. 

    Now as a grown-up, I own one apron.  It is cow print.  It’s a full length apron that slips over the neck.  I rarely wear it, but I love it all the same.  Over time, aprons have transformed from practical to cutesy.  Here’s a tribute to the apron I’ve been saving in my email inbox.  It makes me happy.  And nostalgic.  I’d like to share it with you.

    The principal use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.
      It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears. 
    From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
     
    When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.  And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms.Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.  Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.     
     From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.  In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
     
    When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.  When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
     It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that “old-time apron” that served so many purposes.

    It’s funny how Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool,
    Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.

    There may not be another article of clothing that carries as much love as an apron.

      

  • Warning: Roller Skating May Lead to Gullible Bones

    This is a great song.  I first heard it at a teacher training about 4 years ago for incorporating music in the classroom, and I bought it as soon as I got home.  It’s by a girl named Melanie, whose voice is a little Janis Joplin”ish”.   That makes me love it even more.

     

    Me and my niece Ash laced up our roller skates last night.

    She’s been hounding me to take her skating for a couple of weeks now.  Yesterday I conceded. 

    Since it’s a 30 minute drive to the nearest roller rink, I thought it would be wise to call ahead for the times and cost, so I handed Ashlynn  the phone book and asked her to look up skating in the yellow pages.

      Please note, she is an eleven year old who likes to get out of doing brain related activities as much as possible.  She likes short cuts and tasks that don’t require much thinking.  She’d rather look at a digital clock or ask you what time it is, than to study an analog clock.  I might even go as far as to say she is gifted at the art of manipulating others to do for her instead of having to do for herself. Add to that a touch of argumentativeness and a lot of energy and you’ve got Ashlynn in a nutshell.

    I handed her the phone book and here’s how our conversation went:

    Me:  Look up skating in the yellow pages.

    Her:  What does it start with?

    Me:  (dragging it out with an air of astonishment, knowing how lazy she’s being) OOOOHHHHH.

    Her:  O?

    Me: (very sharply) Ashlynn!!  Skating????

    Her:  (matter of factly)  You said O.

    So, after three hours and thirteen and a half lessons of “Hooked on Phonics Worked for Me”, we arrived at the skating rink. 

    Roller skating today and roller skating when I was  just a sprout has changed some, except maybe for the skates.

    I might have nightmares if I think about  how many people’s stinky feet (including mine)  have been in this particular pair of skates. 

    Although the lights, the rink, and the skates carried an air of familiarity, I was disappointed to find there was not Another One Bites the Dust playing like there was in “my day”.  Rather the bass was heavy, the techno was loud, and Lady GaGa was in da house, which isn’t necessarily a good thing.

    The skating commenced.

    At times I felt like I was in a club, especially when some teenage girls showed off their dancing skills with a pole over in the seating area. 

    I was one of 4 grown-ups there.  Apparently most parents drop their kids off, which I might too if I didn’t have a 30 minute drive home.  Even with a lack of chaperones, with the exception of the Dirty Dancing episode, the kids were very well-behaved.  I didn’t see any fighting.  Or kissing.  Or hear any bad language. 

    Which is more than I can say of the skating rink in “my day.”

    Before the night was over, Ashlynn was already asking if we could come back next weekend.  It was good clean fun and despite falling and busting her butt more times than I could count, she skated her heart out, feet scooting and arms flailing wildly about.  As the evening progressed, so did she.

    This morning at breakfast she made sure to report that her wrist was really sore and possibly broken.

    Me:  It’s not broken.  You have strong bones.

    Her:  But I’m skinny.

    Me:  So.  Your bones are still strong.

    Her:  But they’re little.  They’re very gullible.

    (Me and Jason glance at each other and bust out laughing.)

    Her:  Whaaaatttt?  They fall for things easily.

     

    Oh dear me. 

    I’m considering writing a new program.  I’m calling it “Hooked On Vocabulary Worked for me”.

    Let’s pray it works for Ashlynn.

  • Giddy Up Oomm poppa oomm poppa mow mow

    Yesterday I got my hair done.

    Or rather, yesterday I got ma har did.

    Today I’ve changed my name to Elvira.

    And not because we have similar bosoms.  Trust me on this. 

    Let’s just say my hair is a bit dark. 

    I’m including a picture (not of my bosoms).

    So when you see me at The Walmarts you won’t say stupid things like:

    “You colored your hair!”

    or “Whoa!  Your hair is different”

    Gotta go now, meeting someone at the Hungry House Cafe.

    High Ho Silver,  Away!

  • The Moon

    “I see the moon, 

    And the moon sees me.

    God bless the moon,

    And God bless me.”

    I went to feed my dogs last night and I caught a glimpse of it.  Of course my camera and photography skills can not do it justice.

    I was looking through the oak trees and it was shrouded in clouds and carried a spooky air.

    “He covers the face of the moon, spreading his clouds over it.” Job 26:9

    It reminded me of a graveyard scene my sister drew when she was in the fifth grade that I copied.  Stone cold graves carved with RIP resting on hills underneath thin clouds floating across the moon.  My picture wasn’t as good as hers.  My hills were too humpy.  My clouds were too puffy.

    In this picture above, I changed the setting on my camera to “night” and it lit up the foreground, giving it a different look.

    This morning when I awoke, my bedroom was cast with the light from the moon.  But really the moon has no light of it’s own, only a reflection from the sun.  It’s a little deceiving isn’t it?  I took this picture this morning.  The moon wasn’t as close, just a pinpoint in the sky.

    Funny how things so big can appear so small.

    When you’re lonesome and missing someone, do you gaze at the moon and does it remind you that it is smiling on both you and the one you’re missing?

    Even though the world is so large, and the miles are so vast, the moon gathers the two of you under it’s light and holds you in the same place and time.

    Unless of course the one you’re missing is across the world, then it’s daylight over there, and this whole romantic notion is ppppffffffttttttt.

     

    When I consider your heavens,
       the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars,
       which you have set in place,
    4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
       human beings that you care for them?

    Psalm 8:3-4

    Have a wonderful full-moon Friday.

  • Snowballs in July

    I opened my freezer and noticed a bowl of snow in there from last week.  Anyone for snow ice-cream in 75 degree weather?

    When I was in 8th grade, I was sitting in the library, book in hand, talking and giggling with a girl across from me at the table.  Suddenly our teacher starts fast walking towards us.  We’d been caught.  The so-called friend looks up to see the teacher coming closer, yanks the book from my hand, and pretends to start reading it, while I sat there like a sitting duck. 

    My 8th grade English teacher bends over the table, scolds us for acting up in the library, then wags her finger at me, and tells me that she was thinking of referring me to Honors English, but the way I am acting is showing her that maybe that isn’t such a good idea after all. 

    I hung my head in shame.  This was the first time a teacher had really shown much interest in my learning, who saw  potential in me.  I hated that I disappointed her.

    She walked off, I took my book back from the girl who left a smudgy dirty thumbprint on the page where she grabbed it from me.  My teacher held true to her word, however.  I was put in Honors English  my Freshman year, and it ate my lunch. 

    I was used to making A’s easily, not working for B’s.  We were assigned to read a book by Ray Bradbury called Dandelion Wine.  We would read an assigned chapter or chapters, then have a class discussion of “literary terms”  like irony.  I never understood irony.  It’s like poetry to me.  Other students’ hands would be in the air, ready and eager to answer my teacher’s questions about “what does he mean on pg. 25 when he says he walks like an Indian?”  I tried to keep up.  I still remember parts of that book.  I don’t remember the plot or the climax or the resolution, but I remember the feeling of home it gave me and several scenes.  Especially one in particular where he saved a snowball and put it in the freezer to throw at his brother in July.  That idea quickened my spirit and I imagined myself doing it, looking at my sister’s surprised face with her tan legs and tank top when a snowball hit her in the face. 

    The next time it snowed, I got a snowball, packed it good, wrapped it in Saran wrap, and put it in my grandmother’s side by side refrigerator/freezer.  I  hid it, so no one would know my ploy, on the bottom underneath something else that looked white and icy.  I started counting off the days.  My anticipation was high.  But as a young teenager blossoming into womanhood, my energies soon turned from annoying my sister to friends, boys, cars, and cruising the drag and I forgot about that lone snowball hibernating in the freezer.  Much time passed, and then I remembered.  I rummaged through the freezer burned food.  I never found it.  I asked my grandmother if she had thrown it out, but she claimed she never saw a snowball in the freezer. 

    It’s probably best.  I’m sure it rapidly turned to a round block of ice and it probably would have taken Jolea’s head off. 

    As for my English career, I went to the counselor and asked to be put back in regular English for the next year.  It was just too much work.  Someone should have taken my head off.

  • February 16, 2004

    Today is February 16.  Today is the day.  I don’t think of it every year, the day usually passes without a thought, but today I have remembered.  Seven years ago today, my 4 1/2-year-old  niece was holding a puppy, singing it a song, when she was suddenly attacked by two Rottweilers.  I was at work, just finishing up tutorials when I was paged to the office for a phone call.  My sister-in-law told me that Ashlynn had been bitten by her dog and they were in the emergency room.  Her voice was calm, and I imagined she had been bitten by a dog, needed a couple of stitches, and would go home later that night. 

    When I walked into the emergency room and met my sister-in-law, saw her face, and heard her words, I knew then that it wasn’t just a bite.  The emergency room personnel let me go back and I entered and saw the doctors, the nurses, and my brother all around her bed.  Steve, her dad, was holding her hand.  Then someone moved back and I saw Ashlynn with her skinny little naked body laying on the table.  She was alert.  She turned her head and the first words to me were, “I’ve been dog bit.” 

    The Lord was in that room.  I could feel him everywhere.  Although the situation was very serious, the bleeding had stopped, Ashlynn was extremely calm, and a peace was upon me that I cannot explain.  The nurses started pointing out the wounds to me, only when they rolled her to her side and I saw very deep bites on her lower back with tissue protruding that I felt my stomach go queasy.  They were preparing her to be transported to Amarillo for surgery.  The room was quiet.  Suddenly a doctor grabbed my hand forcing into Ashlynn’s and urged me to talk to her and tell her she was going to be okay. 

     I began to get a little panicky realizing the seriousness of it all, knowing that my mother needed to be there.  And as much as I should have stayed there with my niece and my brother, I needed to get out of there.  So I left.  I went to try to find my mom.  This was before she carried a cell phone.  She worked for a home health agency.  I knew about 3 of her clients and where they lived, so I got in my car and drove by all their houses looking for her car.  I couldn’t find her.  I called my friend, asking her to pray, I called my aunt, my grannie, everyone I knew, pleading them to begin to pray.  Someone found my mom and by the time I returned to the hospital, she was there and they were loading into the ambulance. 

    They gave Ashlynn morphine and she never slept.  It had an adverse reaction and was as if she was coming out of her skin, reaching for things that weren’t there, saying bizarre hallucinating statements.  Then she went into surgery.  After a while, the doctor came into the waiting room and informed us that he had sewn up her front, and when he rolled her over to sew up her back, the bites were much deeper than surface level, so they needed to open her up in the front to clean and stitch the interior wounds.  The dogs had nearly bitten through her.  She had cuts on her intestines, kidneys, stomach, and liver.  Stitching the intestines was time consuming because the doctors had to literally pull them out and unwind them to search each and every inch for wounds.  

    Four hours later the surgery was over and she was placed in ICU.  By this time, the word had reached all four corners of our small town.  When she awoke she was greeted with visitors, flowers, cards, phone calls, stuffed animals, more than anything I’ve ever seen.  The nurses began to turn the visitors away.  During the next 10 days of recovery, our family was showered with love.  Prayer chains were active, a fund and donations were given, strangers who saw it on the news or read about it in the paper came to visit, sent her cards, gave her toys.  People came daily from surrounding churches to pray for her without fail.  Mankind is truly generous and good.

    She’s had two other surgeries since to undo scar tissue that formed adhesions and caused unbelievable pain in her intestines. 

    I hate to think about what she endured.  I remember her words that day in the hospital, “I need a drink.  I got dirt in my mouth.”  And I can’t help but picture her being dragged around the backyard by those dogs whose animal instincts were to kill.

    “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.”  Genesis 5o:20

    The greatest act of love I’ve ever witnessed came during that time.  One stranger who came to pray told me he was praying for healing of the memories.  I had never heard that expression before.  So much of our focus was on her body, and not her mind.  Our God is so good.  That prayer was answered and although she has scars to remind her, Ashlynn has no fear of dogs to this day. 

    Today she’s an outstanding eleven year old girl.  I talked to her on the phone a while ago.  She was going to jazz class and then to church, two things she loves.  She was talking with her mouth full and I scolded her.  She made all A’s and B’s on her report card.  I think she deserves a little money for that. 

    I couldn’t imagine my life without her.  She is a little bundle of energy, a friend to all, a hater of broth, an amazing artist, a survivor for sure. 

    And a testimony to our God, who is with us  in the valley of the shadow of death, who brings us through trials, who saves our souls, and heals our wounds, and our memories.

    To God be the glory.

  • Dig This

    A proverb from me:  A sunny day makes the heart happy.

    The temperatures climbed today and gave everyone around here a bad case of spring fever.   And then to make matters worse,  a Gurney’s Seed Catalog arrived in my mailbox.

    Oh the joys of gardening!  I would love to reap the rich rewards of a well planned garden.  But alas, the word “plan” is not really in my vocabulary.

    I’ve never been a planner.  I wasn’t taught to be, and it’s a good thing because it just doesn’t suit me.   I would rather meet each day as it comes.  Head-on.  I don’t lay out my clothes the night before, nor do I pack my lunch.  I’d rather be in a frenzy every morning.  Obviously. 

    I rarely think about what’s for supper until my stomach growls and then I realize I have no meat thawed.   Good thing I love cereal.  If only my husband would learn to love it half as much.

    The occasions I have planned,  have usually gone okay, but I’ll tell you what.  When those plans get a kink in them, I don’t bend easily, which is why it’s best for me to not plan at all.

    With one exception.  The one area of my life that I am forced to plan is my job.  And let me tell you, it was a lesson learned the hard way.  Teaching a classroom full of kids typically means if you don’t have every single second of their day filled, they’ll find something to fill them with.  Which usually isn’t good.  So I am diligent about planning my school day.  I have to be, I learned early that it saves me from heartache,  high blood pressure, and murder.  Nevertheless, it was a hard habit for me to attain.

    And then there’s the garden.  You can’t really have a garden if you don’t plan for it.  One year I attempted to grow pumpkins without planning.  Or watering.  And that just doesn’t really turn out well.  I don’t advise it.

    This year I’ve decided to be a planner in the garden.  I’m playing offense instead of defense.  I’m being proactive rather than reactive.  I will have pumpkins in October not December. My summer will be filled with the earth’s bounty.

    I am experimenting with a gardening technique I read about called a No Dig Garden.   Basically it is gardening on top of the ground, layering your soil with organic materials that compost and feed your soil and you don’t have to dig.  It doesn’t matter what kind of condition your soil is in either.

    It’s kind of like seven layer dip: the beans, the sour cream, the salsa, the guacamole, the lettuce, next the tomatoes, the cheese, and if you must eat those nasty little black olives, go ahead.

    I did a little studying up on the No Dig Garden Technique, filed it away in a filing cabinet in my brain under G for gardens, and went about my business. 

    Well on Sunday I was piddling around out at The Place while Jason worked inside our little trailer house and I decided I’d just go ahead and get started on my garden.  No time like the present right?  So I chose my garden spot, then I began the layering process. 

    This is the recommended layers:

    • Start with newspaper or cardboard
    • Then a little alfalfa
    • Add a little nice manure (chicken, horse, cow, whatever you’ve got on hand) or Commercial Fertilizer
    • Straw
    • More fertilizer
    • Compost

    Next you water it well, and you can begin planting seedlings for an instant garden.

    This sounds wonderful right?  So I began laying down leftover cardboard from a gajillion boxes of laminate flooring we purchased.  The next layer is manure, so  I got a bucket and a shovel and walked out to the pasture to find some.  I soon found out, a bucket of crap doesn’t go very far on a garden plot.  After about 3 buckets full of grunt (my grannie’s word for dookie), I was about 1/5 of the way completed, and I happened upon my husband, who eyeballs my project and calmly quips, “You’ll never finish that before sundown.”

    I gaze off into the west at the hot ball of gas nearing the horizon.  Sundown?  Oh yeah.  That’s when it gets dark.  I can’t build a garden in the dark can I?  Hmmm, just another example of my inability to plan.  Nice thinking, beginning a lengthy project at 5:00 in the evening.

    Since my daylight was short, I then decided to use two buckets instead of one and walk faster.  Back to the pasture, shoveling my poo, carrying two buckets to the garden, dumping them on the cardboard, doing the  fast walk back to the pasture, shoveling my poo, carrying two buckets to the garden, dumping them on the cardboard, doing the  fast walk back to the pasture, shoveling my poo, carrying two buckets to the garden, dumping them on the cardboard. 

    Never. Ending.

    Needless to say, I was never happier to see the sun go down.   I found some bricks to lay on the cardboard so the wind wouldn’t carry them away, and then I high tailed it to the bed. 

    I don’t know when I “plan” to return to my No Dig Garden.  Or if I “plan” to at all.

    A roto-tiller is sounding pretty good right now.

  • Happy VD

    I’m just here to say that you haven’t experienced Valentine’s Day until you’ve experienced an elementary school classroom on Valentine’s Day.

    The pink cookies with sprinkles, the Valentine Cards, the vanilla cupcakes with confetti icing, the heart-shaped donuts, the glittered Valentine boxes, the conversation hearts, the high volumed children, the green-sucker stained tongues, the sugar highs, (including me, the teacher), and finally the sugar crash.

    I’m whipped.

    Can I just tell you that I’m whipped?

    Will someone please listen to me when I stress that I am W-H-I-P-P-E-D?

    Anyone?

    Cupid took a bull whip and lashed me, whipped me, stomped me, and then sat his fat, half-naked butt on top of me with an arrow poking me in the gut.

    My brain is cream cheese frosting right now.

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    Here’s my logic:  if light is opposite dark, and black is opposite white, and up is opposite down, then salt is opposite sugar.  Logical?  Yes, I think so. 

    I just consumed an enormous amount of Gardetto’s with 430 milligrams of sodium to help offset the 900 grams of sugar I ate today.

    It’s not working.

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    My romantic thought of the day:  On our honeymoon Jason took me by the hand, pushed the PLAY button on Patsy Cline’s Crazy, and we slow danced cheek-to-cheek in Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame while tourists stared, and the world stopped turning except for us that day.

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    We can do no great things;
    only small things with great love. —–Mother Teresa

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    Valentine Day?

    How can anyone be romantic on a day with the initials VD?

    Happy Heart Day, tell someone you love them.